Rolling On One

Arlene has been surfing the Boston area Craig’s List since we bought the house in Maine, first looking for furniture we needed and more recently just because she likes to. She’s been noticing spinning wheels every now and then. This weekend there was one posted for sale in Topsfield. We go through there on our way between Newton and Casco. The picture looked good, the posting said it had worked, so it seemed worth a stop. OK! As far as I can tell, from what little I know, it seems to be in good shape. The woman who sold it to us said it belonged to the grandmother of the person she bought it from, and she thinks it’s from the 1950s to 1970s. Judging from the condition of the wood and the nylon bushing on the bobbin, I think that’s reasonable. So I’m getting set to learn to use it. The belt was broken; I have it running on some cotton mason’s twine that I spliced together. The treadle was connected with a length of very coarse jute twine that broke after a few seconds of treadling; I think some good nylon twine will be a good replacement for that.

This project has been in the cellar since the middle of the summer, completely stalled out. Before Emma came up for the first time, knowing only that there was going to be a 4-year-old in the house, we thought it might be wise to get it out of the way. I haven’t worked on it since. But I got back to work on it on Sunday. I don’t think I got the cane soaked enough this time, or else it’s been overworked by now, because I broke it in two places. There ought to be a way to loop the ends around previously worked loops on the bottom to secure them; I’m not really worried. Anyway, I now have four of seven steps done. That doesn’t mean I’m more than halfway done, though. The first three steps are much easier than this one was, and I think the next two get a little harder yet. So I think it’s more realistic to think I’m a third of the way done.

We ventured out onto the lake on foot. The ice is getting thicker, now that we’ve had a couple of weeks of seasonable cold. There were lots of snowmobile tracks on it, and one ice fishing shelter close enough to get a good picture. There’s a small town of ice fishing huts across the lake, too far away to show up well in a picture.

A local advertising paper had several articles about an ice fishing derby that’s going to be held later this month, at the time when the ice is normally the thickest. In past years the biggest fish caught, a Togue, which is something like a landlocked salmon or lake trout, has run up to over 35 inches long. I think that’s from Lake Sebago, which is a much bigger lake than ours.

Since Arlene & I were alone this weekend there were no other people using the living room table for their laptops, and we had it for a jigsaw puzzle. Arlene found a relatively easy one of flags. The pieces had very tricky shapes, even for a Springbok puzzle.

We went walking around our trails both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday we put on snowshoes and did a short jaunt. We have one set of old snowshoes that have real babiche (rawhide) webbing that we never use, and two sets of 1970 vintage snowshoes with wood frames, neoprene webbing, and heavy leather bindings. There’s also a brand-new pair of aluminum snowshoes that Anne just got.

I generally prefer to wear snowshoes rather than not if there’s about six inches or more of snow. You really don’t sink down as far in the snow as your boots would and I find it easier going at that point. If there’s more than a foot of snow snowshoes make a big difference. Anyway, the snowshoes resting by the front door looked kind of picturesque (or maybe just pretentious):

Here’s Arlene the next day, when we did the whole border of the property (not a big walk, not as much as half a mile, but it does take lots longer in snow than on dry trail)

I remembered to take a picture of the biggest rock in the place (as far as we’ve found, anyway). That’s a separate boulder on top, by itself much to heavy to move. I think it’s that boulder on top that made me think of a rhino. So this is what we call Sleeping Rhino.

We had steady light snow on our way to Maine this past Friday, starting near the MA-NH border and continuing the rest of the way. Visibility was fine driving. The roads didn’t feel particularly slippery to me, but as we were leaving the Hannaford’s supermarket in Windham we saw a car do a big skid in the parking lot. We had been going 20 mph behind some very cautious drivers most of the way from the turnpike exit up to Windham (we were even beginning to wonder whether we would get to the supermarket before it closed). After seeing that skid, I was more sympathetic to the slow drivers. The whole ride took us more like 4 1/2 hours than the usual 3.

I went to the dentist to get my new crown put it on Tuesday morning, and to the periodontist’s office for a cleaning on Wednesday. I told the hygienist that something was bothering me on my left side, and not to be surprised if I was uncomfortable when she was working around there. Sure enough, when she was poking around the upper left I yelled. That was the spot I thought was there! When the periodontist came in at the end of the appointment and looked at it and looked at her notes on it he said, “You were very generous in saying ‘possible decay’ there. That’s certainly decay!” So I called my regular dentist as soon as I got back to work, and he knows where to look and that there’s something there (that he probably should have spotted when I had my last cleaning in his office.)

On Wednesday night Arlene saved my butt for meeting a deadline. I had signed up for a swap of Chinese New Year art made with hand-carved eraser stamps. I’ve been carving stamps for something over twenty years, but not much for the past two years, when I’ve been more likely to spend my time knitting. The deadline for the swap hostess to get participants’ pages for the swap was Feb. 1. I figured that I was pretty much OK if I had them in the mail on Feb. 1 — there would still be time to bind the whole thing and get it in the mail to arrive before Chinese New Year on Feb. 18 — but that not having it in the mail the day it was supposed to get there would not be acceptable. At any rate, we worked pretty steadily from suppertime until 10 PM (Arlene wanted to watch _Medium_) stamping, embossing, trimming paper, and glueing parts together. There was still one more stamp to add to each page in the morning, and the pages needed to be signed, but enough was done that there wasn’t any problem getting them in the mail before work.

I have one extra page still. I can’t scan it and show you yet. It’s strictly forbidden to publish pictures of these swap things until all the swap participants have received a copy. Around Feb. 19 or 20 it’ll be in the clear.

It was good and cold this past weekend. The internet weather forecast for Casco was predicting -16 for an overnight low Saturday morning. It felt like close to zero at the Kennebunk rest area, and I could believe it was zero or below when we got to our house, but it wasn’t anywhere near fifteen below.

I woke up just before dawn, maybe around 6 AM, and noticed that the humidifier in our room wasn’t going. With the remaining chest cold I had, and with the extra-low humidity you get when the weather is extremely cold, I felt kind of strongly that I wanted it on. Maybe Arlene had unplugged it in the middle of the night because it was making too much noise cycling on and off? No, it was plugged in. I pushed the switch, but didn’t see or hear any sign of activity. Then it clicked: the power was off. Darn. The heat doesn’t work without power, so I had to expect that the house would get cold, and I’d have to go outside for wood for the stove. Well, that wouldn’t happen for a little while, and I might as well go back to the warm bed while it was warm. When it got a little light outside, I found a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, checked the breaker box to see if the problem was just in the house, and phoned Central Maine Power. They had a recorded message saying that there was an outage affecting Casco and Otisfield, a crew was assigned, and power would be back as soon as possible. So there was nothing else to do, and I went back to bed again. The power was on before 9, and the house hadn’t gotten particularly cold yet, so all was well. The lowest reading I saw on the thermometer outside the living room window was -4, a good cold morning but nothing memorable.
I did a lot of knitting, at least enough to finish Matt’s sweater. Here it is!

It fits pretty darn snug. I really think I made it too small, but he says he likes it. I hope it stretches out!

Anne was also busy knitting, on a cardigan from the Yarn Girls Book of Quick Knits or some such. She had also brought a copy of Maggie Righetti’s Knitting in Plain English which I looked at.

I baked a loaf of pumpernickel to go with a lasagna Anne had brought from Cambridge, for a good substantial meal.

We walked around our trail system both Saturday and Sunday. We’ve chosen a name for the biggest boulder (that we know of — maybe there’s another bigger one somewhere else in the woods) on the property: Sleeping Rhino. It was a little cold for much walking Saturday, but we did get around the trails and out on the ice on the lake just a little. Matt had brought studded tires for a mountain bike. On Sunday he put them on the bike in the garage and went out on the lake for a few minutes. He reported that cycling with the studded tires was easier than walking on a bare patch of ice in his boots.

On Sunday the temperature was up to the mid 20s, just a nice winter temperature without wind.

We were up in Maine the weekend of Jan 20. I was feeling kind of crummy with a bad chest cold. It took me until almost noon on Sunday to feel that I was having a good time, and by then it was almost time to come back to Newton.

On Saturday we went to Bridgton for the winter carnival weekend. It wasn’t really cold, but there was enough wind that it did feel chilly walking around. We went to the crafts sale at the community center. We had some good soup at the cafe there, run to benefit the senior transportation program. There wasn’t as much to see as at the craft sale last year. I don’t think we got anything there except for the soup.

We went over to the town historical museum. The exhibits have changed since we were there last winter carnival. There was a big exhibit about the town band. A young woman docent told us that her grandfather (or was it great-grand? well..) was one of the founders of the band, and that they still have his baritone horn but no mouthpiece for it. Maybe next time I’m at Rayburn’s I’ll find something in that bucket of used mouthpieces.

Here’s the, I think Methodist, church in downtown Bridgton from the street coming back from the museum:

Back home we worked on an old springbok puzzle, a Dali painting done on commission for Springbok probably back in the ’60s, something like Burghers of Calais, but I don’t remember the name. It turned out to be surprisingly easy, Unfortunately we’re missing one piece from it, but that didn’t spoil the fun. Here it goes back in the box: